Giving technical presentations to non-technical audiences: part 4: telling the story in their language.

Focus on why and exactly how your information matters to the audience, and you will have their full attention.

Last time, we suggested a way to avoid irrelevant technical detail by starting with five magic questions posed by your audience. Guided by these questions, you will tell them not what seems most interesting to you but what matters to them. Now let's see just how to do this in practice.

APPLYING THE MAGIC QUESTIONS

Let's say you are a safety expert at a large mill and you have just installed a major system for monitoring explosive or hazardous dusts, gases, and liquids. It is a safety expert's dream: fully computerized, incredibly complex, based on the latest information, and ahead of anything else in the industry. You have been asked to present it to a mixed audience of upper management, production, research, and first-line supervisors.

You may be tempted to tell them, blow by blow, just how fantastic and intricate this system is (magic question 1: What do you want to tell me?). But then you remember the other magic audience questions: 2) Why does it matter to me? 3) How does it affect what I do? 4) How can it help me do my job better? 5) What do you want me to do with this information? When you consider these questions for each of your audience groups, your presentation will take a very different direction.

Instead of beginning with technical detail, you will probably first summarize why the system was needed: say, to address problems discovered in safety audits. Similar problems have led to disasters in other companies. The system prevents disasters by automatically monitoring dangerous substances throughout the mill.

Next, as you consider the magic questions, you may realize that your talk is a great opportunity to avoid implementation problems. For instance, supervisors may be happy about the increased safety, but they should be aware of the need for training. Specifically, operators may be tempted to disable sensors that set off alarms during routine cleaning, which tends to stir up flammable dust. (Key-point backup: example of a devastating dust explosion caused by unsafe cleaning practices.) Supervisors will also want to know that you have a plan for anticipating and minimizing production interruptions caused by the system.

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You may even decide to lay the groundwork for the next phase of the project: extending the system so any substances introduced into the mill in the future will be added to the database automatically, with no chance of a slip-up and possible disaster. Here, management might be concerned that the project is a "bottomless barrel" requiring yearly infusions of capital. You might reassure them by showing how Material Safety Data Sheets (which are in any case required by law) can be used to automate the link to future substances. All that is required is that the sheets be filled out promptly, with an automatic copy and "alert" sent to the safety database.

Audience members from the research department may be worried about the additional bureaucratic burden of having to clear every substance used in research, even if its amount is ridiculously small. Here, you could reassure them that no clearance beyond that already legally required is involved, only a link programmed into the system. The main work will lie with the safety group, which must devise a speedy way to evaluate safety hazards introduced by new substances.

Guided by such audience-focused questions, you can turn a potentially boring talk into something that achieves real progress for you and makes the audience feel considered and respected. All that remains is to organize the material sensibly and support it in ways that are meaningful to the audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Cheryl and Peter Reimold have been teaching communication skills to engineers, scientists, and businesspeople for 20 years. Their latest book, The Short Road to Great Presentations (Wiley, 2003), is available in bookstores and from Amazon.com. Their consulting firm, PERC Communications (phone: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail]), offers businesses consulting and writing services, as well as customized in-house courses on writing, presentation skills, and on-the-job communication skills. Visit their web site at www.allaboutcommunication.com.